The Prayer of George W. Truett's Mother circa 1874

      I was baptized in the Truett Memorial Baptist Church in Hayesville NC in 1959 when my father was pastor there. George Truett was born there  about two miles SW of the town in 1867. Find him on Wikipedia, the grandest Baptist of the first half of the 20th Century.

   When he was about seven according the the Keith Durso biography of Truett, in 1874 he and his brother came upon his Mother prostate on the ground one morning weeping and praying to Almighty God. This wife of a Confederate soldier who had several Baptist ministers in her own family seven years after the War Truett tells of her Mother praying:

     She was down on her face before God. I can remember until yet the surprising pathos of her prayers.She said " Lord Jesus, I can never raise this household full of boys like they ought to be reared without Thy help. I will make shipwreck of them without Thy Help. I cannot guide them, I cannot counsel them. I cannot be the woman a Mother ought to be to her children without God's Help. Teach me and Help me every hour.

  Truett said she arose singing and was joyful the rest of the Day.

   That's the stuff of the best of the Baptist witness in America, that's where it comes from.

   Amen.